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Islamic State issues 'annual report' detailing atrocities

Extremist group adopts Western business practices in producing a report aimed at cataloguing its finances and attracting more funding.

A Turkish Kurd walks away as airstrikes hit Kobani, inside Syria, as fighting intensifies between Syrian Kurds and the militants of Islamic State group on Wednesday. The Islamic State has released a financial report that details the progress of its campaign. (Lefteris Pitarakis / The Associated Press)

The glossy cover of the Islamic State’s annual report features an armed fighter jauntily looking over his right shoulder, decked out in clean, green army fatigues while holding an automatic rifle in his right hand.

Inside the latest 410-page report, or “al-Naba,” released on March 31, 2014, the Islamic State’s statistics are laid out in black and white, and are meant to detail the progress of their military campaign. Chilling graphics illustrate 7,681 military operations involving rocket launchers, truck bombs and assassinations, sticks of dynamite, handcuffs and suicide bombers.

The extremist group may hate Western society and values but it has adopted Western business practices in producing a report aimed at cataloguing its finances and attracting more funding for its caliphate, notes Christine Duhaime, a counter-terrorist financing specialist.

“They issue these annual reports and they describe them as necessary in order to obtain their funding. Just like a big corporation issuing reports of successes to get more funding,” she said.

“These are the people who should keep you awake at night. And they are really good at public relations and social media.”

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On Thursday, Islamic State forces made advances in the Syrian border town of Kobani, despite U.S. and coalition airstrikes. The Kurdish town, which is of strategic importance as it is on the Turkish border, may yet fall as air power alone is not enough, a Pentagon spokesperson said, according to The Associated Press.

“Kobani could be taken. We recognize that. We’re doing everything we can from the air to try to halt the momentum of ISIL against that town,” said U.S. Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, referring to the group by one of its acronyms.

It’s estimated the Islamic State has about $2 billion in assets, which it uses to buy weapons — everything from old Soviet tanks to guns left behind by the U.S. army in Iraq. Details regarding its assets were discovered in the seizure of 160 computer flash-drive sticks obtained by Iraqi forces, reported the Guardian.

The latest Islamic State financial report, which covers November 2012 to November 2013, shows the group is an incredibly sophisticated propaganda machine, said John Lawrence, the director of external relations for the Institute for the Study of War, a non-partisan, non-profit Washington, D.C.-based think tank that has studied and translated the two available Islamic State annual reports.

The annual reports are organized into cold-blooded chapter headings such as assassinations, armed attacks, bombings and prisoners freed.

In 2013, the group reported carrying out 10,000 operations in Iraq and nearly 1,000 suicides.

Attack metrics outlined in the report are meant to illustrate the effectiveness and use of “centrally distributed resources such as suicide bombers,” the institute said in a backgrounder research paper on Islamic State annual reports. They show a higher command structure and they “provide a means to communicate organizational efficacy to outside parties and donors, Al Qaeda groups and adversaries.”

The Islamic State sells itself as having an organized, military campaign and it is mostly self-funded. In every town or village the terrorist group conquers, it sets up a war economy to feed its bank account.

As soon as the Islamic State invades a town, one of the first priorities is to raid the banks and then freeze all the remaining funds, said Duhaime.

“From what I understand … they takeover the banks first thing, they leave some money in, then they wait a couple weeks and allow the locals to come in and bank with them,” she said.

“But in order to get your money out you have to go in front of a council and describe what money is yours and how come you want it, what it is for. To get your money out, you must pay a tax,” she said.

Duhaime has heard the tax is above 10 per cent and they must pay it every time they withdraw money.

“If you are a Christian, if you get your money you are lucky — and you have to pay a higher tax. It is just horrendously offensive, hard for us to reconcile,” she said.

“People don’t go back for their money because they don’t want to be investigated.”

Besides oil refineries the Islamic State used to control in Syria, the majority of its funding is coming from kidnap ransom payments — mostly from Western sources, said Bessma Momani, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a professor at the University of Waterloo.

“The French government paid $2 million for hostages recently, contractors have private insurance — there is a lot of racketeering, extortion, kidnapping involved here. That is the No. 1 source and it isn’t talked about a lot because it is coming from Western sources,” Momani said.

The Islamic State also exports an unknown number of barrels of oil every day but it is hard to know how much the group makes from this, she said. “There are a lot of numbers being thrown around but no one knows exactly how much they have.”

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